1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to motor vehicles generally and, more particularly, but not by way of limitation, to a novel method and apparatus for avoiding collisions.
2. Background Art
Rear end collisions resulting from one vehicle following another vehicle too closely ("tailgating") are a frequent cause of accidents the world over. In the United States alone, the social impact of such occurrences in terms of accidental death, injury, medical expense, property damage, and resultant insurance costs is enormous. Yet, even in today's high technology environment, the driving public is conditioned to operating vehicles in a reactive mode. Advances in safety equipment for motor vehicles are mainly reactive in nature. Seat belts, air bags, roll bars, etc., are all designed to protect people from injury when a collision occurs. Such equipment, though excellent for the protection of life and from serious injury, do nothing to prevent rear end accidents. There is a clear need for proactive vehicle safety equipment designed to avoid this type of collision.
As a rule of thumb, it is sometimes recommended that a motor vehicle operator maintain a distance between his motor vehicle and the vehicle immediately in front calculated as one vehicle length for each 10 miles per hour of the vehicle's speed. While this may be a useful general guide, it fails to formally take into account many relevant factors such as road condition, weather, visibility, general traffic conditions, type of vehicle, etc.
There have been a number of attempts to provide systems which calculate vehicle parameters:
U.S. Pat. No. 4,853,856, issued Aug. 1, 1989, to Hanway, describes a vehicle motion logger which includes a microprocessor attached to a motion sensor. The microprocessor calculates and stores such data as maximum speed since last stop, distance, date, and duration of maximum speed and stops, etc.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,994,971, issued Feb. 19, 1991, to Polestra, describes a road inventory system which includes a plurality of video cameras mounted on a vehicle. The video images are recorded together with vehicle motion information for later viewing and use.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,065,320, issued Nov. 12, 1991, to Hayashi et al., describes a control and display system for battery operated forklift trucks to accumulate data for maintenance administration, the data including operating hours and distance travelled.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,122,961, issued Jun. 16, 1992, to Toyama et al., describes a navigation system for a vehicle which displays vehicle location on a map. Inputs to the system include odometer reading and photographic, audio, and steering angle information.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,189,617, issued Feb. 23, 1993, to Shiraishi, describes an integrated motor vehicle control system which integrates the control functions for vehicle engine, automatic transmission, traction, and suspension.
None of the above systems provides information for motor vehicle collision avoidance.
Accordingly, it is a principal object of the present invention to provide method and apparatus to assist in motor vehicle collision avoidance.
It is a further object of the invention to provide such method and apparatus that is easily and conveniently used.
Other objects of the present invention, as well as particular features, elements, and advantages thereof, will be elucidated in, or be apparent from, the following description and the accompanying drawing figures.